If I Can't Have You

by Patti Berg

  “I drank at least half the bottle while I watched the tide rolling in and out. It was hot. God, I don’t remember it ever being that hot. My throat was dry. I remember feeling dizzy as I walked back to the house from the beach. I thought I might be getting sick. My head hurt, I felt nauseated. I’d planned on just going to bed, the hell with having a party with Carole.

  “I remember turning off the lights. I remember Carole sneaking up behind me, throwing her arms around my neck and kissing my back. She’d picked a fine time to get amorous, and I’d picked a fine time to get sick.”

  Trevor attempted to swallow, but his throat felt tight, swollen, just as it had that night. His temples throbbed again, and he remembered the pain he’d felt. “My head hurt so bad I couldn’t think,” he told Adriana. “Everything was blurry. ‘Not now, Carole,’ I said, but she didn’t listen. She wasn’t about to give up. I stumbled toward the bathroom, but she was all over me.”

  Trevor lowered his head to his knees as the sickness churned in his stomach. He could still remember the nausea, the dizziness, the ringing in his ears, Carole’s mouth on his neck, and her warm breath on his cheek. He reached over his shoulder and could feel the welts from the deep scratches she’d left on his back.

  “She wouldn’t leave me alone. I remember doubling over in pain, thinking I was going to die. ‘Go to bed,’ I told her. ‘Can’t you see I’m sick?’ All she did was laugh at me. I tried getting away from her, but she grabbed my shoulder. I was in enough pain without her digging her claws into me.”

  Adriana gripped his arm, and he raised his head, shocked by the frown he saw on her face, the look of disbelief in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Carole scratched you?” she asked.

  “Five welts down my back. She liked to get rough, but she’d never drawn blood before. I had to get her away from me. I remember pushing her away, I remember hearing her start to cry. I didn’t want to hurt her. I suppose I should have asked if she was okay. Maybe I should have comforted her, but I was sick. All I wanted to do was get to the bathroom and put my head down on something cool.

  “I don’t know how long I was in the bathroom, I don’t even remember when I joined her in bed. I was so tired, so dizzy, and the room was completely dark. I thought I should apologize to her, but she was quiet. I figured she was asleep or still mad, and I just wanted to close my eyes.

  “I must have been running a fever because my body was drenched in sweat. Even the sheets felt damp and uncomfortable. But none of that mattered. All I remember is putting my head on the pillow and falling to sleep.”

  “Did she speak to you at all?”

  “No. Not in bed, not before, either. The last thing she ever said to me was how tired she was of me and every other man.”

  Adriana shifted in the sand, kneeling in front of him, wrapping her arms around his knees. “When you woke up the next morning,” she asked, “did you still feel sick?”

  “Nauseated. Dizzy. I remember the sun beating down on me through the windows... feeling hot... wishing I had something cold to drink. There was this sickening odor in the room. Then I felt something sticky on my hands, and something cold clutched in my fingers. My eyelids were heavy, but somehow I managed to open them. I was holding a knife. Carole was beside me.”

  He looked away from Adriana, toward Carole’s house, the bedroom where he’d woken up. He stared at the window and could picture the furniture inside. The big oval mirror over a French Provincial dresser. The gold brocade wing-backed chair that sat in the corner with a red silk robe thrown over the arm. The white-satin sheets that were stained a reddish brown. And even easier to see was Carole’s body. The slash across her throat. Blond hair matted with dried blood.

  He lowered his head to his knees, the nausea back again, and waited for the illness to subside.

  “Let’s not talk about this anymore,” Adriana pleaded.

  “I have to,” Trevor said. “I have to remember everything.”

  He took a deep breath, looked again at the house, and into the bedroom. “Carole’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling. Her arms were slashed, her stomach, her chest. The knife slipped from my fingers and I rolled away from her and onto the floor. Something shiny fell off the bed, maybe one of Carole’s bracelets or something. I’m not sure, but I must have been sleeping on it. I ran to the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror. There was blood on my face, my hands, my back. I’d been so ill I didn’t even know I’d been lying in Carole’s blood all night.

  “I remember getting sick, then forcing myself to take deep breaths. I tried to remember what had happened, but I couldn’t.”

  He looked at Adriana, hoping to see understanding in her eyes, when he knew he should see revulsion and hatred.

  Instead he saw warmth, concern, and understanding. And she was leaning toward him, not backing away.

  God, he didn’t deserve her.

  “I’d never been so scared in my life,” he said. “I remembered the knife that had slipped from my hand, and I wondered if I could have killed Carole. Everything in me screamed that I wasn’t a murderer. But who would believe me? I thought about my career, my reputation. I pictured everything I’d worked for being destroyed in just one night. How could I possibly have thought about myself right then? I should have thought about Carole, her friends and family. But I thought about me!”

  “It’s all right, Trevor. You did what anyone in that situation would have done.”

  “But I imagine most other people would have called the police. Not me. I just wanted to get out of there. I took the knife, ran down to the beach, and dived into the waves. I stayed under for the longest time, hoping I’d drown in the tide, but I wasn’t that lucky. I guess I came to my senses and threw the knife out as far as I could, then made sure the water had washed away all the blood. Finally I went back to the house. I found my shirt and the rest of my clothes and threw them in the car. Again, I went back inside and wiped my bloody footprints off the floors and my fingerprints from everything else. I even got rid of the footprints on the beach and around the house. When I was sure I’d left no traces of my being there, I got in the car and drove home. I figured if I had some time to think, I might remember what happened. I was worried, too, that if I couldn’t come up with a logical explanation I’d be arrested. I just wanted to get away.

  “There was a party at Sparta that weekend. It was the Fourth of July, and Harrison always threw a party to celebrate. I changed into a tux when I got home, got rid of the clothes I’d been wearing—I weighted them down and threw them into the ocean—and drove to Sparta.”

  “Harrison said you were acting strange when you arrived.”

  “Strange?” Trevor laughed. “I’d spent the night with a dead woman. I might have killed her, and I couldn’t remember. Of course I was acting strange.”

  “You should have told Harrison. You should have told somebody what happened.”

  “I didn’t want to drag anyone else into my problems. I’d already decided what I was going to do, so I just put on a good show for everyone, letting them think I was my normal self. I drank just as I always did. I ate and danced and played chess with Harry. Janet was there. I think she sensed something was wrong, but she didn’t say anything. When the fireworks started I took a bottle from the bar and walked down to the pool. Nothing seemed right any longer. My life might as well have ended in that bed with Carole because I felt dead. I couldn’t forget the sight of her body. I couldn’t forget the smell of her blood or the feel of that knife in my hand. I drank the rest of the bottle and I remember it slipping from my fingers and shattering on the marble. I said a quick prayer, maybe asking for forgiveness or something crazy like that, and then I walked into the pool. I lay facedown in the water and tried to think of something other than death. Drowning seemed a pretty easy way to end everything. I was too big a coward to do it any other way.”

  “That must be when Janet saw you.”

  “I suppose. The last thi
ng I remember was hearing someone scream, then everything went black, until I splashed out of the water and ended up here with you.”

  Adriana squeezed his fingers tightly, and he wondered how she could listen to that story and still want to touch him?

  “I should have died,” he said. “I didn’t deserve this second chance at life.” He looked into her warm blue eyes. “I’m sure I don’t deserve you, either.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I don’t have many redeeming qualities.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself,” she told him, placing a gentle hand over his heart. “When I look in your eyes I see nothing but warmth and kindness. When you smile, I want to smile, too. I don’t have to look too deeply to find the good, Trevor. It’s right out in the open. I’m afraid you’re the only one who hasn’t seen it.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “Maybe you bring out the good in me.”

  She shook her head. “It’s always been there.” She tilted her face and kissed him lightly.

  “I could be a murderer.”

  “You’re not,” she said adamantly, shaking her head.

  “What makes you so sure? Did I mention anyone else being in the house? Did I mention Carole haying any enemies?”

  “I think you’ve spent so much time wondering whether you killed her that you’ve failed to wonder who else could have done it.”

  “I was there. No one else was in the house.”

  “It was dark. Carole rushed off to her room. You grabbed a bottle of chilled champagne that you can’t explain and went outside for what, an hour? Two?”

  “I wasn’t keeping track of time.”

  Adriana knelt beside him again. “You were outside long enough for someone to kill Carole, someone who wanted to make love to you when you came inside.”

  “Who?”

  “Janet.”

  Trevor laughed at Adriana’s preposterous statement. “That’s crazy. Janet wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “I don’t think she did it intentionally. I think she went crazy that night. I think your rejection at the party pushed her over the edge, and she didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “Why would you think Janet did it?”

  “That first day you were here, when I was gone all day, I went to see her.”

  He frowned. “Why?”

  “I was looking for some way to prove that you weren’t really Trevor Montgomery.”

  “I’d almost forgotten that you didn’t always believe me.”

  “I believe everything about you now. Everything—especially that you’re not a murderer.”

  “If she told you that she murdered Carole, she must be reliving some movie she’s seen.”

  “She didn’t tell me that at all. She just wanted to talk about you. ‘He was a very wicked man,’ she told me. Of course, I already knew all that.”

  “You’re stalling, Adriana. You’re accusing Janet of murder. What did she say to make you think that?”

  “She just kept telling me that you left her, that you didn’t love her, that you liked other women too much.”

  “That was common knowledge.”

  “Let me finish. Please. She seemed so sad. She’d wanted you to love her the way she loved you.”

  “I already told you. I didn’t want to get involved with her because I didn’t want to hurt her. I never touched her. Not once.”

  “But that’s not what she thought. She was sick, remember? She’d been in a mental hospital. ‘He was my lover.’ That’s what she told me. She said that you had to keep it a secret from the public and from the studios.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Of course it’s crazy. But it’s what she thought. She was in love with you. She hated the fact that the studio wanted you to be with Carole. She was jealous.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “She didn’t have to. If I’d been Janet, I would have hated what the studio was doing, too. I would have despised Carole.”

  “Enough to kill her?”

  Adriana shook her head. “No, I couldn’t do that. But if you’d seen the look in Janet’s eyes, if you’d heard the way she told me that the doctors had made her forget all the bad things in her life, you’d believe that she was capable of killing someone.”

  “I still don’t believe she did it. Where’s the proof?”

  “You’re carrying it around with you.”

  “What?”

  Adriana touched his shoulders, sweeping one hand down his shoulder blade, over the five welts on his back.

  “‘I wanted him to play rough,’ she told me. ‘I did everything I could to make him mad. I even scratched his back until it bled. But he wouldn’t play my game. He just left me.’ That’s what she told me, Trevor. I’m sure she was in the beach house that night. I’m sure she killed Carole. When you came up from the beach, and told her to leave you alone, she scratched you. She desperately wanted your attention.”

  “Do you think I wouldn’t have known the difference between Carole and Janet?”

  “You were drunk. It was dark. You were sicker than you’d ever been, and you said the woman who scratched you never spoke. You assumed it was Carole because it was her house. But I think it was Janet. That’s the only thing I can think. Maybe those scratches on your back don’t seem like convincing evidence to you, but they do to me.”

  Trevor took a deep breath, trying to remember what he had felt, trying to remember the kisses and the feel of the woman’s hands on his body.

  He closed his eyes, thinking about Janet and Carole. One tough, one sweet. One dead, the other possibly a murderer.

  No, he could never believe that about Janet.

  “It’s too much of a stretch to think Janet could have killed Carole,” he said. “A person would have to be mad to kill someone so brutally.”

  “You’re forgetting something Trevor. Janet might be sweet, she might have been your friend, but she’s been in a mental hospital for the last sixty years and, as much as you hate to believe it, she is mad.”

  Chapter 19

  A breeze blew in from the ocean when Trevor and Adriana returned to Santa Barbara, cooling the unusually warm night air. They crawled into bed and made love, as if for the first time, as if for the last, and Adriana fell asleep in his arms, her soft breathing music in his ears.

  He loved her. God how he loved her.

  That blessed thought lured him to sleep, to dreams filled with Adriana.

  There were no nightmares—at last.

  oOo

  The buzz at the front door startled Trevor from sleep.

  “Ignore it,” he begged as Adriana jumped up in bed. He rolled over and looked at the luminous numbers on the alarm. Nine o’clock. No sane person would ring unannounced at that time of the morning.

  “I can’t just ignore it,” Adriana mumbled, climbing from bed and wrapping the body he knew so intimately in a white terry cloth robe. “What if it’s something important?”

  “What could be more important than staying here with me and making love again?”

  She leaned over his naked body and kissed his lips. “Nothing’s more important than you, but I’ve given you my undivided attention for the past four days and nights. I have a job, responsibilities.”

  Another ring and a pounding knock silenced her.

  “I’ve got to get that,” she said, blowing him a kiss before she walked from the room.

  Trevor slid from the bed and struggled into the tight black jeans Adriana had promised would loosen up. Man wasn’t meant to wear tight clothes—he’d definitely have to go shopping again.

  He was buttoning the top button on the trousers when he walked into the living room through one door, and Stewart barged in through the front with his wife right behind.

  “Calm down, Stewart,” Maggie mumbled as she followed her husband. “You’re going to have a stroke, sweetie.”

  Stewart jerked around. Trevor couldn’t see the look on the lawyer
’s face, but he assumed it was grim, considering the way Maggie instantly backed off and sat demurely on the love seat.

  Stewart faced Trevor again, his face red with anger as he glared at Trevor’s naked chest, his bare feet, and his mussed-up hair.

  “You look a bit upset, Stewart,” Adriana said, closing the door. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “I’m not here for breakfast, I’m here for explanations,” Stewart stated. “First off, where have you been for the past four days? I’ve called the shop, I’ve called your number here, I even called Sparta, and Elliott said he hadn’t seen you.”

  “We were at Sparta.” Adriana walked toward Trevor and slid her hand into his.

  Stewart’s brows knit together as his gaze darted quickly over Adriana’s attire, then back to her eyes. “Why did Elliott lie?”

  “I asked him to,” Adriana said calmly. “I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Was that your idea, or his?” Stewart asked, turning his glare toward Trevor.

  “Mine, originally,” Trevor admitted. “I was tired of intrusions.”

  “Why? You needed to get Adriana alone so you could seduce her, make her fall under the same spell you’ve put on other women?”

  Trevor frowned, not liking the vicious turn of the conversation, but he kept his tone light and a smile in his eyes, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

  “Neither do I,” Adriana said. “Care to explain?”

  “Why don’t I begin here,” Stewart said.

  He threw one of the papers he was holding onto the coffee table.

  “What the hell were the two of you doing wandering around Forest Lawn?”

  “Looking at headstones,” Adriana answered quickly. “Haven’t you and Maggie done crazy, spur-of-the-moment things on occasion?”

  “What my wife and I do or don’t do isn’t of the least importance at the moment.”

  “And what we do is absolutely none of your business, either,” Adriana tossed back, standing her ground with Stewart.

  “It is my business when you go gallivanting around in cemeteries. What I want to know is why the hell you had to check out Carole Sinclair’s grave?”